How we read HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183896

Carol earlier:
> > I think zanooda meant that he wasn't yet working at the Ministry
in the first chapter of DH, "The Dark Lord Ascending." At any rate, we
don't know for a fact that he's working there. Certainly, he has
access to the Ministry and Ministry contacts (like Lucius Malfoy in
OoP) or he couldn't have Imperiused the Head of Magical Law
Enforcement, Pius Thicknesse, but Yaxley doesn't yet hold that
position himself, as he does when he and Umbridge hold their
inquisition for poor Mrs. Cattermole. When the Imperiused Thicknesse
becomes the puppet Minister for Magic, Yaxley takes over his old
position, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, presumably as his reward
for Imperiusing him.
> <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Without looking at the books yet, how do we know that he was not yet
working at the Ministry in the first chapter of DH? Say he was 
apprehended at the end of HBP, did anybody recognize him before he
escaped? I mean he obviously did escape, right? So who says that he 
could not have continue working at the Ministry?
> 
> I mean, if he indeed has an access to Minister, no less, isn't
easier assumption to make that he was working at the Ministry rather
than he did it somewhere else? <snip>

Carol responds;

I think you're misreading my post because I allowed for the
possibility that he was working for the Ministry. We just don't know
it for a fact.

I agree that he must have been Imperiused at the Ministry, but he
wouldn't have to be working there, any more than Lucius Malfoy was
when he Imperiused Podmore and Bode. All he'd need is Ministry
contacts. And he must have been reasonably close, both physically and
as a friend, to Thicknesse in order to Imperius him.

What we do know for certain is that he wasn't yet the Head of Magical
Law Enforcement, the position that he holds in "Magic Is Might,"
because as of "The Dark Lord Ascending," Thicknesse still holds that
position.

Now Yaxley, as we learn in "Spinner's End," was one of the DEs who got
off by claiming the Imperius Curse in VW1. He was not at the DoM, so
he was not sent to Azkaban at the end of OoP, either. Since he wasn't
living in poverty and disgrace, AFAWK, he must have done reasonably
well for himself and may well have been a Ministry employee between
LV1 and Dumbledore's death. We don't know. We're not given that
information.

We do know, however, that his first exposure as a DE occurs when he's
found "Stupefied" (actually Petrified) on the steps of the Astronomy
Tower in HBP. From there, we don't know what happened. He may have
been briefly imprisoned, along with the Petrified Fenrir Greyback,
after HBP, which would be early June (around Draco's seventeenth
birthday), but by mid-July, he's certainly free, as is the second
batch of arrested DEs (named in my response to Mike a moment ago). Or,
as you suggest, he could have escaped unrecognized. Scrimgeour gives
no indication that he knows Yaxley's identity. He only speaks of the
"Stupefied" DE on the stairs, (You're an ex-Auror, Minister, and you
don't know a Stunning spell from Petrificus Totalus? Or is JKR's
memory at fault again over the short space of two chapters?)

Carol, enjoying our discussion of old Brutal Face, whose identity as
Yaxley was one of her few correct predictions for DH